@JM
Kong Kong is nicer - but they drive on the opposite side - things are more expensive - opportunities more competitive - although it is Asia's Zurich or London.
Yunnan and Kunming especially is still backwater-ish - very very country bumpkin behavior with a severe if not total lack of culture - pollution, spitting, litter everywhere - dog poop, vomit (from binge drinking). The weather is nice - but the pollution from construction, industry, and prolific cars and heavy trucks makes Kunming look more like a beijing or chongqing.
The people are selfish - everyone has to be first (like F1 drivers) - as noticed by the left turners jumping the light and cutting in front of thru-traffic. A common misconception is the traffic police are real police - they're not - they're traffic "guides". The real police wear guns (don't argue with the guy with the gun). They try to enforce rules but are impotent as the penalty system is ineffectual as noted by @tigertiger.
The lack of courtesy, attention to traffic rules is indicative of the culture - so yes, as an investment banker I'm sure you've experienced most meetings where the pervading philosophy is "yahoo! free money" - a common concept amongst Kunmingers seeking investment - no thought about ROI, risk management, exit strategies, etc, just vague allusions to "you'll make a lot of money" male bovine feces (b-sh*t).
HK, like any international city, has a wide variety of excellent international cuisine. Kunming - mixian.
That said, Kunming people - if you make it past the selfish louts, frauds, and other outright criminals - can be genuinely warm, accommodating, naively helpful, easy going, relaxed - things missing from larger cities.
Where some see challenges, others see opportunities - albeit fraught with some excellent third world risk (fraud, waste, corruption, etc). The culture is ingrained - it'll take quite a long time to migrate this culture into quality, honor, integrity - that's both the challenge and the opportunity.
As for HK - the education system can be excellent, but also remember they had a severe health issue with foot & mouth disease, bird flu, and of course, SARS. We lived in HK for almost a year - the doctors were reasonably competent - but the "civilized" insurance system mandated use of dubious lowest bidder labs - my wife had three lab tests - each resulted in different blood types, positive and negative tests for hepatitus, high and low blood pressure, and a plethora of other bizarre results. When we returned to Japan (not the most famous for quality medical care) our Japanese doctor looked at the lab tests (my wife was pregnant), scoffed and tossed the reports in the trash can - didn't even bother to comment (actions speak louder than words)...so IF you move - practise caveat emptor with everything - frauds and cons in HK are also prolific. Beware of the ayi's most are good - but you can have some severe labor problems - we fired an ayi for taking our daughter out of the house early in the morning (7am) without permission and disappearing with her for half a day. When we finally tracked her down (by cell phone) she asked our other ayi to lie and tell us she took our daughter to see the doctor (b-sh*t) - the security guards told us she met some man in a mall with our daughter - obviously we fired her - but the courts told us we had to pay her severance pay - even though she was fired for cause - damned labor courts. We figured worst case scenerio - the ayi was setting us up for a child kidnapping.
On our second trip to HK, to setup our office, we stayed in a 5-star hotel and used the hotel baby-sitters - allegedly because they would be more dependable (stupid assumption) - we discovered the hotel supplied sitter was feeding our daughter cough medicine to make her sleep - so the sitter could lay on our bed (her feet were black from strolling around the hotel room balcony, ostensibly so she could smoke) and watch tv undisturbed. Basically she was drugging our infant daughter.
Kunmingers aren't as sophisticated - yes they lie, are greedy, selfish - but it's much easier to detect. The frauds and crimes you'll be exposed to in HK are much more sophisticated. Caveat emptor. Hopefully you'll never meet these kinds of people, but if you're running an investment firm - beware.
You'll meet many "complicated" people - even at the allegedly professional level. We took a well-known and respected executive in the accounting industry to meet our banker (Top 10 world bank - structured finance MD). We were contemplating using his firm as our inside accounting firm. He sprung an "investment opportunity" on our banker at the beginning of our meeting - without warning or permission and definitely not on the meeting agenda - surprised both our banker and me - which is a VERY bad thing, as you well know, bankers loathe surprises.
Fortunately we have a very close relationship with our banker - but had it been any other bank - that meeting could have severely damaged both our reputation and relationship. Obviously, we immediately terminate the company for fiduciary abuse (inside cause).
Of course, I've also seen my b-school students (exec level) experience major fraud from hiring their classmates (embezzlement) - but that would have been easy to detect had they paid even nominal attention to the business process - people here are utterly unsophisticated in their fraud schemes.
If you decide to pack up and leave, KM will definitely miss you - but the thinking here and in China in general at gov level is more dynastic (beyond a single lifetime - very very long-term) - although if your investments are in the USD 100 million to USD 1 billion+, level - Qiu He (Kunming Party Secretary) will DEFINITELY miss you. He's in a severe financial bind as evidenced by the prolific gov "investment" companies. Unlike your investment firm which looks for opportunities to fund, the gov investment companies are looking for money to fund their long list of difficult to finance opportunities.